The State of Nebraska formally accepted the results of last month’s primary election yesterday as the Board of State Canvassers met in Lincoln.
The board is composed of the state’s 5 constitutional officers: Governor Jim Pillen, Secretary of State Bob Evnen, Attorney General Mike Hilgers, State Treasurer Tom Briese and Auditor of Public Accounts Mike Foley.
Evnen said after the board finished its work in the afternoon that he thinks that “Nebraskans have good reason to take pride in the quality of the elections that are run across our state.”
Pillen said the “proof’s in the pudding” and Nebraskans can be “100% confident” in the election’s security and accuracy
The panel randomly checked the results of 40 precincts, or 3% of precincts statewide, using paper ballots to check the machine counts in one federal race, one state race and one local race on each of 7,898 ballots.
Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Wayne Bena told the board “there were zero discrepancies between the hand tallies and the counting machines.” When there are variances between machine and hand counts, they are typically small.
Voter turnout was 28.1% with 36.1% of registered Republicans casting ballots compared to 28.4% of Democrats, 12% of nonpartisan voters, 8.4% of Libertarians and 6.3% of Legal Marijuana NOW voters.
No automatic recounts were triggered this year in statewide races, but one odd problem was reported in rural Harlan County, where all voting is conducted by mail.
County election officials realized shortly after sending out 1,301 ballots that the ballots weren’t initialed or signed by the county clerk, as required by state law.
Voters were sent a replacement ballot with an explanation and instructions, but 184 returned the original, invalid ones. Those were not counted, but 137 of those voters were able to vote again – legally.
The other 47 votes were not counted, but officials said they would not have changed a single federal or state result.